On Fri, 2007-08-24 at 13:40 +0200, Kay Ramme - Sun Germany - Hamburg wrote: > Ian, > > Ian Lynch wrote: > > > > UK government now has a policy to make files available as pdf with links > > to Acrobat reader. If we could persuade governments to make files > > available in odf with a link to OOo it would make a massive difference. > > This would be easier with a smaller download size but it might be worth > > having a go anyway. We might be able to enlist the help of other Open > > Source groups - OSC is currently quite active in political lobbying in > > the UK, for example over the BBC i-player. > OSC == Open Source Community ?
Open Source Consortium www.opensourceconsortium.org Group of small businesses in the UK with business models based on FOSS acting as a trade association. Canonical joined recently and there is some stuff about iplayer on the web site front page. We also successfully got 130 MPs to sign an early day motion in Parliament censuring BECTA the government education IT agency for having procurement frameworks that excluded FOSS (Moodle in this case). > Do you have an example of how this exactly looks like? > > > >> - We need to work on the package structure. It is not optimal regarding > >> the distribution of the packages content and the underlying concepts > >> (just install an OOo on Windows while de-selecting everything, you would > >> still get about 200mb copied to your disk without any usable > >> functionality ;-). Stephan Bergmann and Ingo Schmidt are currently > >> working on this, one part being the separation of the URE (see > >> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ODF_Toolkit/Efforts/OOo_without_URE). > > > > Presumably, among other things this will lead to the possibility of > > upgrades directly from the net rather than having to install a complete > > package? > Yes, as long as the underlying package system (e.g. APT) supports it ... > > > > > > > > > See opening comment. We need a compact and easy to get/install odf > > reader that causes no objections to downloading and installing. One of > > the things against OOo in that role is its seen as an office suite. So > > perhaps a version of OOo with a "dumb" user interface that doesn't look > > like an office app but looks more like Acrobat reader and can export pdf > > files. Then all that is needed is the odf file because anyone can then > > create the pdf version if they need it. Then a button you click that > > can, if you know about it, make it into regular OOo ;-). Its silly but > > the fact that its a whole office suite puts people off. "I don't want a > > whole office suite just to read a file" - ok give them what they want. > As noted in my blog entry ("My Visions") we need to work towards an > architecture which does not differentiate between applications but just > work approaches, having a generic and extensible "engine" as its base > ... eventually getting rid of the heave weight "Office Suite" tag. > > You know, OOo does not inherently need to be big and heavy, it is just > so because it is so ;-) I'm glad you said that. I used Impression Publisher on an Acorn ARM based RISC OS system in 1990 that fit on a couple of 800k floppy discs and could run on a machine with 2 meg of RAM and no hard drive. Outline fonts, real time graphics rotations in frames etc etc so I know code can be much more efficient, its just not always easy to convince people that know nothing except MS Office. That is the problem with a monopoly, no-one has anything else to compare it to so the ideas of what is possible are pre-empted. Problem is that its going to take time to fix all that code so what can we do in the interim? PS Kay - thanks for taking the time to discuss. Ian -- New QCA Accredited IT Qualifications www.theINGOTs.org You have received this email from the following company: The Learning Machine Limited, Reg Office, 36 Ashby Road, Tamworth, Staffordshire, B79 8AQ. Reg No: 05560797, Registered in England and Wales. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
